Israel Halts Bombing After Deadly Strike

JERUSALEM, July 30 — An Israeli air raid on the southern Lebanese town of Qana killed dozens of civilians on Sunday, many of them children, marking the bloodiest day of this conflict and putting enormous pressure on Israel and the United States to move rapidly toward a cease-fire.

Late Sunday, Israel agreed to suspend its airstrikes for 48 hours while it investigates the bombing of Qana, a State Department spokesman said. The spokesman, Adam Ereli, told reporters in Jerusalem that Israel would coordinate with the United Nations to provide a 24-hour period during which residents of southern Lebanon could leave area safely.

“Israel has, of course, reserved the right to take action against targets preparing attacks against it,” he said.

Israel said the Qana strike was aimed at Hezbollah fighters firing rockets into Israel from the area, but an explosion caused a residential apartment building to collapse, crushing Lebanese civilians who were spending the night in the basement, where they believed they were safe. The Israelis raised the possibility that munitions stored in the building blew up hours after the airstrike, destroying the building.

Estimates of the death toll varied. The Lebanese Red Cross counted 27 bodies, and as many as 17 were children. Some officials put the death toll higher, with the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, saying there were more than 50 people killed and news agencies saying the toll was at least 57.

Residents said as many as 60 people were inside the building, most of them unaccounted for.

Whatever the actual toll, the deaths in Qana set off a chain reaction, with protests in Beirut against the United States, Israel, the United Nations and moderate Arab countries. Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas vowed revenge. There were condemnations worldwide of the Israeli tactics in this war against the radical Shia militia group, which set off the hostilities by a raid into Israel across the international border, and new calls for an immediate end to the fighting.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a planned trip to Beirut and decided to return to Washington on Monday to work out a speedy resolution to the conflict that could be brought before the United Nations this week.

“I will continue to work and work and work, that is what we can do,” a visibly shaken Ms. Rice said. “If there is a way humanly to accelerate our efforts, I would do it.”

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, expressed sorrow for the Qana attack but told Ms. Rice that Israel needed another 10 to 14 days to complete its war aims against Hezbollah, according to a senior Israeli official.

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Rescue workers recovered bodies at the scene of an Israeli air raid on the southern Lebanese town of Qana on Sunday.Credit
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

The Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, demanded an immediate cease-fire and made it clear that Ms. Rice would not be welcome in Beirut on Sunday. “There is no place on this sad day for any discussion other than an immediate and unconditional cease-fire, as well as in international investigation into the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now,” Mr. Siniora said.

In Lebanon, Qana is nearly synonymous with the killing of civilians. Ten years ago, in an eerily similar attack, Israel, responding to mortar fire, mistakenly shelled a United Nations post in Qana where refugees were sheltering, killing 100 people and wounding another 100. That attack, on April 18, 1996, shocked the world and helped bring an end to that conflict with Hezbollah after an eight-day diplomatic shuttle by the President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Warren Christopher.

In a speech to the diplomatic corps, Mr. Siniora accused Israel of war crimes and asked: “Why, we wonder, did they choose Qana yet again?” He asked the diplomats to work at the United Nations for a cease-fire, saying: “We cannot be expected to negotiate or discuss anything else while the ruthless, pitiless sword of the Israeli war machine continues to drip with the blood of innocent women and children.”

At the United Nations on Sunday, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council, meeting in emergency session, to condemn the Qana attack and to call for an immediate cease-fire.

“We must condemn this action in the strongest possible terms,” Mr. Annan told the Security Council, adding: “I am deeply dismayed that my earlier calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities were not heeded.”

Ms. Rice said Sunday that she called Mr. Siniora to express her condolences and to cancel her planned visit to Beirut. Instead, Ms. Rice told the journalists traveling with her that the United States was doing “what is humanly possible” to bring about a rapid and sustainable cease-fire. She emphasized that “my work is here today,” meaning with Israeli officials, and she met Sunday evening with Mr. Olmert.

“We are also pushing for an urgent end” to the fighting, Ms. Rice said. “But the views of the parties on how to achieve that are different.” She did not call for an immediate cease-fire, arguing that a long-term resolution required a political package deal, which would include a cessation of hostilities.

“I think what it is time to do is get to a cease-fire, we actually have to put one in place,” she said. “We want a cease-fire as soon as possible, I would have wanted a cease-fire yesterday if possible, but the parties have to agree to a ceasefire and there have to be certain conditions in place.”

Ms. Rice decided to cut her Middle East trip and return to Washington on Monday in order to work on a United Nations Security Council resolution that would try to codify a political resolution to the conflict — including the insertion of a new international peacekeeping force along the border, a resolution of a disputed border area called Shabaa Farms and a return of captured Israeli soldiers — and bring an end to this war in northern Israel and Lebanon, now in its 19th day.

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Rescue workers and neighbors removed one of the victims of Israeli airstrikes in the Lebanese town of Qana.Credit
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Israeli forces have been fighting in Gaza since June 28 after another Israeli soldier was captured by Hamas and other Palestinian militants in a raid on June 25.

Protests erupted Sunday in Gaza City, where Palestinian gunmen stormed the main United Nations compound in protest against Israel’s bombing in Qana, Reuters reported.

Mr. Olmert said Israel would investigate what had happened in Qana. But he and the Israeli army blamed Hezbollah fighters for firing hundreds of rockets from the area of Qana, which is a stronghold for the militia group.

In a statement, the Israeli Army said it had warned residents of the region and of Qana “several days in advance” to leave their homes and said: “The responsibility for any civilian casualties rests with the Hezbollah who have turned the suburbs of Lebanon into a war front by firing missiles from within civilian areas.”

The Israeli Army said it was investigating Qana. It said it was puzzled that the strike on Qana happened between midnight and 1 a.m. local time and hit next to the building, but that the building only collapsed around 7 a.m. Brig. Gen. Amir Eshel said it was at least possible that the explosion was caused by munitions stored inside the building.

“It is possible that various things were stored inside the house, things that ultimately caused an explosion,” General Eshel said. “Perhaps things we were unable to blow up in the strike, that could have been left behind. I say this very carefully, but at the current time I haven’t got the slightest clue what could explain this time difference.”

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Mr. Olmert told his cabinet on Sunday: “We will not blink in front of Hezbollah and we will not stop the offensive despite the difficult circumstances.”

He added: “Israel is in no rush to reach a cease-fire before we get to that point where we could say that we reached the main objectives we had set forth. This includes the ripening of the diplomatic process and preparing the multinational force.”

But there is ever-building pressure to end the fighting sooner, especially from American allies like France and Germany.

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A rescue worker rushed toward a demolished building in the Lebanese town of Qana.Credit
Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press

France has already drawn up a draft Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire to prepare for the deployment of an international force, in which Paris is expected to play a leading role.

But there is also pressure from allied Arab nations like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, who want to see Hezbollah diminished but who sense rising anger about the civilian death toll in Lebanon among their populations.

Demonstrators in Beirut attacked a United Nations building, breaking windows and ransacking some floors. They carried signs reading: “Arabs, you chickens,” and “American-made bombs, dropped by Israeli planes, with Arab cover.”

One demonstrator, Karim Qubaisi, said: “They’re killing our children, and we cannot stay quiet anymore.” He joined hundreds of demonstrators shouting, “We are the people of Lebanon, not of Syria or Iran,” and asking Hezbollah to “destroy Tel Aviv.”

Echoing the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who said on Saturday that Israel wants a cease-fire but Washington does not, Mr. Qubaisi said: “We all know that even if Israel wanted to stop, the Americans are saying no.”

In a statement, Mr. Mubarak criticized the Israel attack as “irresponsible” and called again for an immediate cease-fire.

The European Union foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, said in a statement that “nothing can justify” the Qana airstrike and told Mr. Siniora that the Europeans are “continuously working to reach an immediate cease-fire.”

In Washington, the third-ranking official of the State Department, R. Nicholas Burns, said: “We are close to a political agreement between Israel and Lebanon to end this fighting.”

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Red Cross paramedics carried the body of a man from the rubble of a demolished building in Qana.Credit
Nasser Nasser/Associated Press

But he noted that Hezbollah started the fighting by attacking Israel and said: “This has not been a good two and a half weeks for Hezbollah from a military point of view, and they’ve got to be worried about continued Israeli offensive operations.”

Mr. Burns said the previous situation could not be allowed to persist, with Hezbollah face to face with Israel on the border of Lebanon. “We want to avoid a situation where we essentially put a Band-Aid on something,” Mr. Burns said. “We have to a have view of a sustainable cease-fire. We have to make sure Hezbollah is not allowed to be in a position to strike again.”

On Sunday, Hezbollah fired more than 156 rockets into northern Israel, the Israeli Army said, the highest total so far in the fighting. Eight people were lightly wounded, including a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. So far, nearly 1,900 rockets have fallen in Israel. Nineteen civilians have been killed and over 400 wounded. Thirty-three soldiers have been killed and 88 wounded.

Nearly 550 Lebanese have been killed in airstrikes, with as many as 200 more missing, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Nearly 2,000 have been wounded, the ministry said. In addition, Israel estimates that 300 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in ground fighting with Israeli troops.

The Israeli defense minister, Amir Peretz, the head of the Labor Party, contrasted Israeli attacks, which he said were targeted, with the firing of inaccurate rockets by Hezbollah toward Israeli cities.

“An Israeli pilot has never been given an order to hurt civilians,” Mr. Peretz said. “An Israeli soldier has never been given an order to hurt innocent people. We will continue our mission to prevent future conflicts and in order to guarantee similar incidents do not occur in the future. I think the achievements of the operation are clear: Hezbollah is grown significantly weaker. The I.D.F. forces will complete their mission.”

Israeli tanks and ground forces moved Sunday into another section of southern Lebanon, near Metula, heading toward the Lebanese town of Khiam. The Israeli Army described it as the latest incursion aimed at flushing out Hezbollah fighters and positions along the border.

The World Food Program, in a statement, criticized Israel for not authorizing a convoy of six trucks with aid supplies to travel to Marjayoun, Lebanon.

The Israeli Army said the convoy was allowed to go only two-thirds of the way because there is ground fighting supported by airstrikes near Marjayoun. “Any convoy would run the risk of being hit,” Col. Eitan Abraham said in an interview. “We did allow convoys to Marjayoun yesterday and the day before, and as soon as the current fighting ends, this convoy can go as far it wants.”

“Dozens of humanitarian convoys are going in and out of Lebanon on an organized timetable, and this is a priority for the Israeli army,” Colonel Abraham said. Two other World Food Program convoys went elsewhere into Lebanon on Sunday, the Israeli Army said.